Does Galatians 3:27 teach that baptism is necessary for salvation?

Now Christian baptism is a rite which is incumbent on all who believe on the Lord Jesus Christ. The word of God makes that plain. But to make it necessary for salvation is highly unscriptural. It is dead against the tenor of Scripture. Mr. Roberts quotes a number of examples to support his theory, but in truth they are destructive of it. He quotes the Day of Pentecost, when the convicted hearers asked the apostles, “Men and brethren, what shall we do?” The answer was; “Repent, and be baptised every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the remission of sins, and ye shall receive the gift of the Holy Ghost” (Acts 2:38).

"For you, as many as were baptized unto Christ, clothed yourselves with Christ." The Apostle assumes that every one in the assemblies in Galatia had received baptism. Every believer in those days, whether Jew or Gentile, gladly accepted this very blessed sign of having part with Christ. Baptism cannot save us, or take our sins away. "Without shedding of blood is no remission (of sin)." Heb. 9:22. But baptism is the mark that a man is a Christian. When a man is baptized he takes upon him the name of Christ; he puts on Christ: he clothes himself with Christ. This is all outward, and it may be nothing more than profession without true change of heart, for baptism is like the door that lets us enter into that great circle of profession which we call "Christianity." Thank God, there are many in this great circle who are true; but, alas, there are very many who are false, who bear the name, but they have never been born again, born into the family of God: they are not truly sons. But these believers in Galatia were baptized "unto Christ." This is not at all a question of law. Christian baptism supposes man to be dead; and nobody asks a dead man to keep the law. The only death that can deliver man from his own death is the death of Christ. Therefore, when a man is baptized, he is not baptized unto his own death; he is baptized unto Christ's death. So when believers in Galatia were baptized, at that moment they "put on Christ," or "clothed themselves with Christ."

Every true believer is clothed with Christ. When God looks at me, He sees me in Christ, clothed with Christ. And when I have been baptized, and man looks at me, he says, That man has been baptized; he is a Christian; he bears the name of Christ; he has put on Christ: he has clothed himself with Christ. And this is true of every believer, Jew and Greek, slave and free, male and female. We all have put on Christ. When God looks at us, He sees Christ. So the Apostle exclaims: "There is neither Jew nor Greek; there is neither slave nor free; there is neither male and female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus." All is Christ and only Christ. It is not an old creation, but a new creation. In the old creation there were all these differences, but this is something entirely new. We are all one in Christ: and if you are Christ's, what need to be circumcised? You do not want to become the children of Abraham — Jews in that sense: the fleshly sense. The Apostle now closes this part of the argument saying, "But if you are of Christ, then you are Abraham's seed, heirs according to promise." Of Christ: you are part of Christ: you are members of Christ: not merely the property of Christ, but you are identified with Christ. See Gal. 5:24: "But the ones of Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh." These Galatian believers are already Abraham's seed, entirely apart from any question of circumcision or the law; and more than that they are "heirs according to promise." The Apostle has shown that Christ is the one true Seed; so if we are a part of that one true Seed, then we are Abraham's seed, Abraham's children, heirs according to promise, and all without law or circumcision.

Further, even the import of the sign in baptism with water is misunderstood generally. It is a sign not of life-giving, still less of the gift of the indwelling Spirit of God, but of death with Christ, as Romans 6 and Colossians 2 make plain. "We who died to sin, shall we any longer live therein? Or are ye ignorant that all we who were baptised unto Christ Jesus were baptised unto His death?" Baptism by or in virtue of the Spirit, as we see in 1 Corinthians 12:13 is into (not "unto") one body, Christ's body; because His work efficaciously unites. Water baptism does not go beyond profession, as in Galatians 3:27 and elsewhere, though we are responsible to be true. No one is true save he who believing has Christ as his life. But the baptism of the Spirit unites the believer to Christ as a member of His body, the church, in the truest and abiding sense.

He who is baptised thereby says he died with Christ to sin and put on Christ. Yet it is only "to" Christ he was baptised, as it may turn out to be without life and only an outward confession, however important it may be, and whatever the privilege. Baptism is to the objective truth of Christ dead and risen, to the remission of sins therein, to sin judged; and not the sign of our subjective state.

What has Galatians 3:27 to say to us on the subject? "For as many of you as have been baptized into Christ have put on Christ." Baptism, here, is said to be a putting on of Christ. Again it does not say it is a public confession of faith, or that Baptism is an act of obedience or represents something already true (though of course it may involve all these). But is it not important to observe that the inspired writer affirms with all the clearness conceivable that the act of Baptism itself effects something? And does not this view of it add tremendously to the significance of Baptism? The fact is as astounding as it is true, that, Baptists, with all their glorying in Baptism, have shorn it of nearly all its meaning! "Baptized unto Christ." "Put on Christ." Here is the grand conception of the rite the Bible presents to us. And surely the Bible knows more about Baptism than any of us. Where have Baptists got their ideas from? Here we go from passage to passage in the Word of God and do not find so much as a reference to their favourite tenets, but on the contrary a repeated insistence upon what they have evidently overlooked, or at least, put in the shade. While they make everything depend upon personal faith, the inspired writers ground certain things upon Baptism. While they would insist upon everything being true before the rite is administered, neither John the Baptist nor Paul confined their view of it within such narrow limits, but John baptized the multitude after telling them what they ought to be; and Paul says, "Buried with Him (Christ) by Baptism." "As many as have been baptized unto Christ have put on Christ." If there is only one way of being in Christ and that through believing, in what way could you be Baptized into Christ; and by Baptism "put on Christ"? But if there is a recognised outward sphere of profession, then one can understand the terms.

Verse 27. "For as many of you as were baptized into Christ did put on Christ." From Christ personal he now passes to Christ mystical, yet still keeping the former in the place of due pre-eminence. We may notice first the cast of the apostle's language. He does not say, because ye were baptized, but "as many as were baptized," etc., leaving room for the inference that not all the people who had received the gospel in Galatia had at that time been baptized. Then, as to the force of his statement, by submitting to Christian baptism they had, whether they worthily apprehended it or not, passed ostensibly, by an outward and solemnly impressive rite, into that new condition into which, by faith in Jesus Christ, all who had not believed in vain had been really and for ever brought. By faith they were all God's children: they who had been baptized had moreover added to their faith this first act of an obedient confession, and by so doing had as it were visibly clothed themselves with Him whose name they bore.

The import and effect of baptism, when undergone by real believers, is variously stated in Scripture. In 1 Peter 3:21 we are told its bearing on the individual conscience of the child of God. In Col. 2:11-12, it is treated with reference to the absolute change from old to new, as the spiritual realization of the old rite of circumcision, when its true meaning is embraced by faith, the believer being there regarded as both dead and risen with Christ. He is therefore truly circumcised and separate to God, because no longer, as to his new standing, in the flesh, but in the Spirit. In Romans 6 we have the same doctrine enforced, with an especial reference to the believer's walk. He is there instructed and exhorted to reckon himself "to be dead indeed to sin, and alive to God in Jesus Christ our Lord." In the passage before us a different figure is employed. The baptised believer is said to have "put on Christ." The filthy rags of his own false righteousness are gone. He renounces his former generation and its empty hopes, and by faith assumes the name and honour which belong naturally to the worthy One alone. He is a new creature in Christ Jesus. This description of the effect of baptism will be better understood by referring to his earlier declaration of the effect of faith in his own case (Ante, chap. 2:20). Christ lived in him, and he in Christ; and he knew both these things by the Spirit, according to the now fulfilled promise of the Lord (John 16:20; Rom. 8:1, 10). In like manner the believer, by descending into and again emerging from the waters of baptism, puts off himself, with his uncleanness, and takes instead the new and divine garments of salvation; henceforth to walk not as other Gentiles walk, nor in the oldness of the letter, as the "concision," but in newness of the Spirit, according to the grace and power of the Lord in whom he trusts.

But this individual baptism of believers, as confessors severally of the name of Jesus Christ, is to be contemplated always in implied connexion with that other and general baptism of the Church at large by the Holy Ghost, of which the Scripture speaks (1 Cor. 12:12-13). There is one body, which receives the name of "Christ" from Him who is its life and head. There is one Spirit also, by whom all true believers are baptized into the one body of Christ. And this latter truth, although not the immediate topic with which he is dealing, comes out more distinctly in what follows.

The only connection with life is the passage in Colossians 2: "Wherein also we are risen with him"; but there it is carefully added, "by faith in the operation of God who raised him from the dead": and even there the coming up out of baptism is resurrection with Him: not simply quickening or life-giving, but formally distinct from it. Baptism is death — reception in the visible assembly, through death of that which we were, as alive in the first Adam, the death of Christ. As to putting on Christ in Galatians 3, it is only the public profession of Him, as contrasted with Jew or Gentile, barbarian, Scythian, bond or free, male or female. The passage itself is that which declares that "we are all children of God [not by baptism but] by faith in Christ Jesus."

But then, he does further and other service in this same cause. He goes on to tell us the glorious things faith works and accomplishes in us and for us. "After faith is come," he tells us in Galatians 3:25-27, "we are no longer under a schoolmaster. For we are all sons of God by faith in Christ Jesus. For as many of you as have been baptized unto Christ have put on Christ." Here are precious deeds of faith! It dismisses the schoolmaster; it brings the soul to God as to a father, and then it clothes the believer with the value of Christ in the eye and acceptance of God. And "God hath sent forth the Spirit of His Son into our hearts, crying, Abba, Father" (Gal. 4:6). And "we are redeemed from under the law" (Gal. 4:5). Can any more full and perfect sense of an immediate dealing between Christ and the soul be conceived, than is expressed and declared by such statements? We are brought from under the law — the schoolmaster, and, with him, tutors and governors are gone; we are "sons" at home in the Father's house, and have the rights and the mind of the First-born Himself put on us, and imparted to us! Can any condition of soul more blessedly set forth our independence of the resources of a religion of ordinances, and the poor sinner's personal and immediate connection with Christ Himself?

And this is shown by the fact of the new place into which God has put His people now, "sons of God by faith in Christ Jesus;" the school of law is not the proper place for us. That does not mean that we are not to profit by the lessons which the law taught, of course. We may profit by the lessons which we learn in school without being under the schoolmaster; but under the schoolmaster, no one says "Father." The place of sons as such is manifestly somewhere else than at school. This, then, has come for us, for "as many of us as have been baptized to Christ have put on Christ." Christ is, according to the truth announced in baptism itself, the One in whom we are, therefore, before God. It is His perfection, His beauty that is seen upon us. Nothing else is seen, no earthly condition, no place of privilege beside. "There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither bond nor free, there is neither male nor female, for ye are all one in Christ Jesus." Manifestly, if each one of us is in Christ, Christ must be the same for each and all of us. There can be no distinction here. For distinction, we must look away from Christ; but if then we "are Christ's," then "are we Abraham's seed," in the fullest way identified with the very One in whom the blessing was to be, identified with the very Heir of blessing, and therefore heirs according to the promise, "in thy Seed:" that is Christ, in whom we are.

By our baptism we have, as a matter of profession, put on Christ. Had we submitted to circumcision we should have put on Judaism, and thereby committed ourselves to the fulfilling of the law for justification. Had we been baptised to John's baptism we should have put on the robe of professed repentance and committed ourselves to believe on the One that should come after him. As it is we have, if baptised to Christ, put on Christ and committed ourselves to that practical expression of the life of Christ which in the next chapter is spoken of as "the fruit of the Spirit." As sons of God, having now the liberty of the house, we put on Christ as our fitness to be there.

The decisive question for the Galatians is this: has their position been changed by conversion to Christ? Are they still on the old legal ground, or on new? What did their baptism to Christ imply? They had been baptized unto Christ, and in so doing had "put on Christ" (v.27). In fact, baptism is in itself a sign of burial, and baptism unto Christ is baptism "to his death" (Rom.6:3). Hence, baptism is a striking picture of the setting aside of the old legal position by means of the death of Christ. I acknowledge by being baptized that the death of Christ has ended the first creation for me. By this I in figure put off the old garment and "put on Christ." This does not mean receiving Christ into the heart, or it would be a strong verse for the deluded advocates of new birth by water baptism. But it is outwardly putting on Christ as a garment. If I have done this, and then go back to law as a rule of life, I loudly proclaim that I was wrong in ever being baptized unto Christ.